Tommy Cooper

The week in radio: Radio 2's Comedy Showcase review

Radio 2 doesn't often make me laugh - not intentionally, anyhow - but the station certainly does its bit for the joking business. Since 2011, it's been the home of the BBC new comedy award and its Comedy Showcase, which started in 2010, has developed several shows, some of which, such as Jason Byrne's Father Figure, have gone on to success. Last week, the Showcase was due to give us five new half-hour programmes, but one - The King's Men, with Robert Webb and Terry Mynott - was pulled because of the Paris attacks. I've heard it and can't quite understand why it's been vetoed (it's set in 1909, in London), but it concerns incompetent secret service agents and, at one point, there are the distant sounds of bombs in it. Anyway, if you want to hear it, it's on iPlayer. It's good.

As are the three other sitcoms in the Showcase (one set in a golf club, one about a nice young man and his bad dad, one centred around an older woman who's not happy with her lot). I liked them all; well crafted, well acted, with the requisite level of nuttiness. But it was the final programme, The Tim Vine Chat Show, which had me laughing the most. It's not a sitcom, it's a standup show, and its energy really fizzes from the radio.

Vine rattles out gags like Tommy Cooper: so many that, even if you don't think they're all funny, the cumulative effect is hilarious. He even forces in some awful jokes when he interviews members of the audience, and gets the whole room to join in some terrible catchphrases. It's a lovely way to spend half an hour.

It was the final programme, The Tim Vine Chat Show, which had me laughing the most. It's not a sitcom, it's a stand-up show, and its energy really fizzes from the radio.

Tim Vine rattles out gags like Tommy Cooper: so many that, even if you don't think they're all funny, the cumulative effect is hilarious. He even forces in some awful jokes when he interviews members of the audience, and gets the whole room to join in some terrible catchphrases. It's a lovely way to spend half an hour.

Theatre review: The Tommy Cooper Show

The Tommy Cooper Show is the third such production seen hereabouts in recent years and attempts to blend a fairly faithful tribute to his stage act into some of the well-documented biographical details of his off-stage life. The gags and misfiring magic tricks are always worth dusting off and Daniel Taylor makes a passable impression in delivering both, even if he does choose to make his first stage appearance without that trademark fez. An unforgiveable omission!

"So, uh, we've got a young cullah'd fellah coming on next. I don't think it's fair to laugh at the afflicted, but... you know the reason their palms are all pink? It's the way they stack 'em before spraying..." For most of us it took about 10 seconds of watching Danny and the Human Zoo, though I'll accept 20 if you're from outwith the M25, or a full 40 minutes if you happen to live in Sunningdale or Midwich, to suss that this was not an utterly valid depiction of Britain today.

And we'd have been right. Early 70s. Early 70s Dudley, in fact, and Mark Benton playing, albeit terrifically, a sweatily odious nimrod (as they said in the 70s). Here he was playing to the woeful gallery (near-empty, chain-smoking, and the beer were as flat as the stomachs weren't) and introducing a 15-year-old Danny Fearon to the stage. Danny was, as some may know, a lightly fictionalised Lenny Henry.

Mr Henry, Sir Lenworth Henry as now is, has been a stout heart in the business they call show for as long now as the stalwarts - Tommy Cooper, Michael Crawford - he first set out (aged 14) to impersonate. As with those troupers, his act has not always satisfied all humours. In fact, there are some (me) who say he might have sideswiped the comedy altogether and gone straight to straight acting, apparently his natural metier, according to the many garlands for his Othello; and earlier this telly year, as Godfrey in The Syndicate, he waltzed off with the show.

But that wasn't going to be an option, was it, for the lad from Dudley. Rada would have been as closed to him as would running through the Garrick naked. His only way ahead, other than dying a daily death in the British Leyland shop, was to refine and sculpt a natural gift for mimicry, and (at least as portrayed here by Kascion Franklin, avowedly another big star in the finding), a graceful mix of ebullient anger. And then get on dirty stages in trodden towns - as one teen pal says, "I'm white, and even I'm scared for yow" - and then get gothically shafted by sleazy managers and agents, and sleazy white girlfriends, all in it for the goldbricking. And then, as happened back then, sell out: Danny's/Lenny's minstrel show segments made for incredibly queasy viewing, not least for their portrayal of the all-white audiences ponying along to blacked-up ruffed-up chintzery. In my, in your, lifetime.

Written by Lenny Henry himself, this was a beautiful and a valuable programme, which is to make it sound less fun than the huge fun it was. (And not least because of the soundtracking: ironies wholly lost on Dudley, they were still dancing then to James Brown, Stevie W, Curtis Mayfield, Shirley & Co.) Many scenes, particularly those between young Danny and his father - "What do you know about happiness? You never laugh..." - resonated with bittersweet pith. It may have been hard for the real Henry, here portraying Danny's (ie his own) father, to bear, given the story's arc of a mother's infidelity and a compromised marriage, but bear it he did, acting with style and two grumpy smiles throughout. I will never again underestimate Mr Henry. I retain the right to find him a glowing actor and a less than funny comedian. But nor, after this programme, will I gaze with my old demeanour upon those who excuse 70s racism as "accidental". We were all culpable.

Edinburgh Fringe interview: Spencer Jones

2015 has already been pretty gracious for Spencer Jones having become a runner-up at this years New Act of the year and now Herbert makes a return to Edinburgh with a brand new show stuffed full of physical, musical, prop-heavy insanity. This is what they say he's a sort of grubby Mr Bean with a hint of Tommy Cooper. This guy is such a dickhead.' Seriously they're words we think is ACE!

Blue plaques celebrating comic greats stolen

Plaques celebrating careers of Tommy Cooper, Sid James, Benny Hill and Irene Handl were snatched from outside Teddington TV Studios in London.

Tommy Cooper impersonator breaks magic world record

Clive Greenaway carried out 18 magic tricks in 60 seconds while blindfolded beating previous world record by one illusion.

26 gags a minute: Tommy Cooper impersonator sets record

A Tommy Cooper impersonator has scooped the Guinness World Record for the most jokes told in a minute.

Tommy Cooper - 'A comic's job is to play the fool'

The 2014 Edinburgh comedy award winner John Kearns considers the magical mannerisms of his idol Tommy Cooper.

Review: Phoenix Nights Live at Manchester Arena

It's a parallel that will inevitably be drawn. As the comedy actor Ted Robbins fell to the floor on the opening night of Peter Kay's Phoenix Nights revival, laughter first filled the air, then doubt, then fear. Was he, like Tommy Cooper before him, genuinely in trouble, or was it part of the show?